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The best and most dangerous thing about
the Internet is the uniformity of access. As a ves-
sel for information of all media, it is fully impartial
in its delivery, no matter the context, medium, or
message. As content on the web is inherently non-
hierarchical, the navigator is able to curate his or
her own experience. It is the individual user who
arrives at one site by leaving another, who at any
moment can make an innite number of choices
about where to go next and how to get there. It is a
space of constant tension between what one wants
to see and what one is seeing, a controlled bombard-
ment. The user, the code, and whatever puppeteer-
minds lurk on the other side of the cybercurtain all
coalesce to shape digital experience.
The Internet is also a space of universal au-
thorship. The ability to “retweet,” “repost,” “share,”
or “like” content created by anyone, anywhere in
the world gives the user “ownership” over his or her
landless cyber-territory, if only for an instant.
Though it is conceptually terrifying, we
make impressive use of the Internet. We make it
work for us. This tool for productivity can, how-
ever, quickly become any number of other things,
whether we direct it to or not. When you are check-
ing your email, emailing your mom a picture of
your dog, it only takes a few clicks to lead yourself
astray. You are, at any point, the same few seconds
from watching videos of pitbulls dressed as unicorns
as you are from watching videos of men dressed as
unicorns fucking each other. You can even watch
both of those at the same time.
In the putting this project together, I ex-
posed myself to an immense amount of varied ma-
terial on the Internet, but I was also presented with
material for which I did not go looking. Pop-up win-
dows proliferate unprompted, burying their content
behind and between our work- and play-spaces,
designed to hide from their own rapid, inevitable
death. In this project I indulge those incorporeal
technological forces to the best of my ability.
I spend hours of every day on the Internet,
using it for everything from mere communication
to mental and sexual stimulation. Every user cre-
ates a private world for him or herself in this public,
formless place. Over the course of assembling this
collection, I found myself entering areas of the In-
ternet that I would otherwise never have visited vol-
untarily, places I did not wish ever to return. But my
relationship to unsavory content changed as I began
to work with it rather than in response to it. I learned
a lot about myself and what I am interested in when
I have access to anything. Whether these interests
were latent within me or entered my being as I ar-
rived at their digital probes is impossible to say.
I was desensitized by this experience in
terms of my threshold for graphic and disturbing
material, but it was also a deeply personal and in-
trospective process. What I would have once found
automatically repulsive became rst mesmerizing,
then almost dull. In trolling the web for content to
appropriate and write about for this project I found
myself unfazed by the hours I spent reading mur-
der stories and studying photographs of eviscerated
women for points of particular interest; this satanic
ritual, that recurring pattern of dismemberment, etc.
I knowingly followed a link to a video of a man
testing his new Kevlar vest by shooting himself
in the stomach with a pistol at point blank range.
Rather than slamming closed my laptop’s screen
in horror at his doubled over, stomach-clutching
moan-screams, my interest was piqued. I watched
the whole thing.
And then, seconds later, I emailed You. Or I
emailed You and I blind-copied everyone You went
to elementary school with and they all posted about
You on facebook. Or I emailed You while mas-
turbating. I can do everything at the same time, I
can see anything I want, and no one has to know
about it. I am as anonymous as I want to be; I can
have casual sex tonight. I can invent an experi-
ence for myself that is terrifying and loving, funny
and destructive and sexual all at the same time.
It’s as real, for me, as I want it to be, because I am
both the designer and the consumer of this reality.
I have attempted in this project to document
my experience on the Internet, but I’ve also manip-
ulated that experience, aestheticized and organized
it toward a particular end. Everything in here is real,
but it is also fabricated. I do not endeavor in this
project to capture the spirit of the whole Internet,
though I am speaking to the universal digital experi-
ence. Though all of the material may seem mastur-
batory or estranged, it is my attempt to locate what
personal “real” can exist within the thick tissue of
virtual seduction.